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A year after Sandy, how storm preparedness and disaster cleanup vary in other countries, including Japan and China. Also, the battle of billboards between Iran's hardliners and reformists. Plus, recalling Lou Reed's Berlin.

When Hurricane Sandy hit one year ago, journalist Jen Poyant was at work in Manhattan. She discovered her home was under seven feet of water. And that led her to Asia to compare government relief efforts after disasters.

Social media played a big part in this weekend's protest by Saudi women. The women defied an informal ban on women driving, and then posted videos. A Saudi comic decided to add his voice — changing the lyrics to a Bob Marley tune.

With national policy on climate and energy in political gridlock, the opponents are fighting in local and state trenches. That's why money is pouring into a small county north of Seattle, where there's a debate over a shipping terminal that would send coal to Asia.

Anti-American posters and signs lined Tehran's busiest thoroughfares during Iran's talks with officials from Washington last week. But the posters were quickly taken down. It's a sign of a heated battle between Iran's hard-liners and reformers — being waged in a very public way.

The music world has paid tribute to singer and former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed, who died on Sunday aged 71. To many fans, Lou Reed represents the dark and dangerous side of the Lower East Side in New York. But in 1973, Lou Reed recorded an album that moved the doom and gloom to East and West Berlin.

Artists, writers, musicians — they are all in search of the elusive muse. Writer Mason Currey looked at the daily rituals of creative people throughout history to try and pinpoint what about their habits helped with the creative process. The Guardian's Oliver Burkeman recently tested some of these rituals on himself.